So take a look at what you’ve got to work with. Then decide what results you can achieve within those boundaries.

Alan Clayton wrote a terrific piece recently about the role of focus in successful fundraising. I encourage you to read it and let it influence your planning this fall. Doing one thing really well is more important than doing many things poorly!

Where to spend your money

This is a constant question for any nonprofit organization. We get pretty good at making do. Sometimes, that forces us to be creative.

Sometimes, that means we fail.

1. Printing and mailing

For organizations with a direct mail program, these expenses can add up quickly. You might feel it’s a great area for do-it-yourselfing.

But think carefully.

Maybe you mail a small number of pieces. Professional printing may not make financial sense. Buying or leasing a good office printer might be the better bet.

A strong appeal letter doesn’t have to be fancy. And if you have to touch every page anyway, take that as encouragement to add personal touches. Handwritten notes on that appeal could boost your results!

If you’re mailing more, though, it’s worth investigating mailing houses. This is especially true if you’re attempting to do bulk mail from the office. A good mailing house can often print, sort and mail for close to what you’d spend doing yourself. And it will happen faster and look more professional.

Remember, managing volunteers takes time. So talk to a mail house before you start revving up the volunteer stuffing team. You can get a quote for the job, and weigh your time against the money.

Mailing at the less expensive nonprofit rate makes sense. But maybe you’re concerned about how long it can take to reach your donors. Talk to your mailing house about that as well. Mine discovered that a nonprofit rate mailing from a smaller post office went out as fast as first-class. The smaller post office had no room to leave it sitting around!

2. Data systems

Excel is not a solution. And unless you’re a genius with it, neither is Access.

Again, consider both time and money. A good system should be easy to use – even for newbies. With turnover what it is in our sector, training is an important consideration. (You shouldn’t need 2-week training sessions out of state to use your system.)

Consider also the time you spend trying to make Excel or some other less functional solution work. Investing in great donor software is a must.

Invest time upfront by making a careful choice.

Does the software track what you need to track?

Can you and your colleagues learn it quickly?

How easy is it to pull reports?

Can you adapt it to your organization’s unique needs?

What’s their support like?

(Talk to other users and make sure support is great and available via a toll-free number. I was shocked to find one system required a toll call just to ask a question.)

Then spend more time on a good conversion. Make sure you’ve got the information well-organized. If you don’t, or you allow it to become messy, there’s no system that can overcome that. And you’ll waste all kinds of time trying. Keep your data clean!

But maybe it’s an annual report or something else the public will see and judge your organization on. It has to be good!

Whether you handle this inside or not depends on your skills. Canva, Google Slides, Gimp are all useful and free tools. But they don’t guarantee great results. You need some design experience to make the best of them.